What do you call $1.7 milllion worth of Playbooks?

Do you recall the last time you heard a crime story where a thief had the bad luck to say, try to rob a cop convention? I have another one of those stories. Police in Indian reported on Friday that a shipment of Blackberry Playbooks was stolen at a truck stop - truck and all.

The driver had told the police that he was bound for Canada with nearly $2 million worth of Playbooks in tow. He'd stopped at a rest station Madison County, Indiana. When he came out, his truck (and 22 pallets of Playbooks) was gone.

Can you imagine the face of the thief when he opened the back of the trailer? I can and I'm enjoying the mental image.

This haul is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3500 Playbooks, and they won't be easy to sell. At this point almost everyone who wants a Playbook already has one. Between the Black Friday sales ($200 each) and the large supply of refurbs, there's something of a glut on the market.

And the price of the Playbook is down significantly, too. RIM likely estimated that shipment of Playbooks as being worth $500 a piece, which is the MSRP. But in reality the Playbook is selling for under $300 on Amazon, and if you look carefully you can find it for even less.

But still, 3500 Playbooks. The mind boggles. I'm having trouble even picturing that many tablets in one place, much less what could be done with them. I mean, I don't have that many enemies, and there are only so many projects you can do with the limited hardware.

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Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader:"I've been into reading ebooks since forever, but I only got my first ereader in July 2007. Everything quickly spiraled out of control from there. Before I started this blog in January 2010 I covered ebooks, ebook readers, and digital publishing for about 2 years as a part of MobileRead Forums. It's a great community, and being a member is a joy. But I thought I could make something out of how I covered the news for MobileRead, so I started this blog."

The Playbook is still a good tablet with stereo front facing speakers, high quality screen, HDMI out, and handles Flash and multi-tasking better than most other tablets. Along with the upcoming 2.0 update possibly fixing those issues that plagued it from the beginning and able to run at least some Android apps means you shouldn’t underestimate their value.

Besides, the crook could always sell them for $99 or less and still make a profit. Only RIM loses out on this, unless of course they got compensated by insurance coverage…

Remember also, at $99 or less people are willing to buy just about anything…